I have just been updating the links page on our work intranet. It was an exciting trip down memory lane, as nobody had bothered to look at it in several years. How many? Well, put it this way: the list of “useful search engines” was headed by Altavista and didn’t mention Google. The links list was characterised by a charming naivety – “BBC News – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news – good for news.” and so on. Most of it was a fairly pointless undertaking in this vein – we’re all more web-literate now and don’t need hand-holding.In fact links lists in general feel a bit old hat now. At best they’re a sort of public bookmarks list or a statement of one’s position (or aspired position) within an imagined community. When the ‘community’ is firing the links list is handy as a ‘further reading’ primer, and one of the reasons I like Livejournal as a system is the ebb and flow of memes and themes across a friendslist (half links page, half RSS feed). When the community is dormany the links list gets dusty very quickly.
At the back of my mind there’s a desire to brush down the various FT sidebars and update them, but I’m resisting so far. I’d be interested to hear what any other contributors think.